


Summer (the Epilogue)

by CrabOfDoom



Series: Summer (an Awkward FFXV Teen Romance) [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Implied Nudity, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 06:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11396871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: The aftermath of an imperial blind date in Galdin Quay.





	Summer (the Epilogue)

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of the 'Summer (the First Time') comic on my landofdoom tumblr. Link at bottom.

"This is certain to be the biggest mistake of my life, but--" Ravus sighed. His hands reached out to gently cup Safay's face; his thumbs softly brushed over the green-eyed boy's cheeks. "--when will I see you again, Safay? _How_ can I see you again?"

"You... want to?" Safay asked, wide-eyed and quietly.

"Yes," Ravus answered. He felt sick to his stomach to admit he'd grown attached, yet the prospect of what it would feel like to say nothing and always wonder loomed as far more unpleasant. "Why would I not? You've been nothing but wonderful to me, these past days. I don't want that to be all there is; all there will ever be. But, I'm--my sister and I--we're prisoners of the Niflheim government. 'Wards of the State', they say, but it's only perfume over the stench of the truth. I don't yet know what to do, and will thus be in Niflheim, until I do. I'm certain that I won't be given odd vacations to Galdin whenever I wish for one. I wouldn't dare stay so long away from Luna, anyhow. So, tell me: how do I see you again?"

"You will," Safay assured him. "Sooner or later. Around Gralea, maybe. Definitely around the Keep."

"Gralea," Ravus repeated. He looked again at the dual barcode tattooed atop of Safay's right wrist. "You're from Niflheim?"

"More or less," Safay said, with a glance aside. "Everything I have is in my quarters, in the Keep, if that's what you mean."

"It is, yes." Ravus paused to look over his companion. "How in the world have I not seen you before?"

"You have," Safay told him. "You just didn't like it, and you've been ignoring me. No, it's okay. It was pretty bad, I guess. I'm usually covered in, like, ten layers of shit, from missions and targets and training and monsters."

Ravus held a hand over his mouth, in recognition.

"The dirty wretch," he breathed out. "Astrals above, Safay, I'm so sorry."

"What?"

"It was clearly rude, perhaps even cruel, of me to allow appearances to keep me from even extending a hand in greeting. Especially when someone so kind was underneath, all along."

"I wouldn't worry," Safay shrugged off, almost shyly. "Ardyn did say that my particular levels of filth are something most sane people avoid."

" _Izunia_ got you to... well..." Ravus settled for a hapless gesture of his hand.

"Bathe," Safay finished for him. "But, no. You did. He just made the suggestion that it might help get you to look at me."

"He was correct, I must admit," Ravus said. "So, even these past mornings? You've kept up with it? For me?"

"Yeah. Every day, for almost five weeks, now. Certainly not something I'd have kept up with on my own, without a good reason."

"Your own health isn't a good reason?"

"Not good _enough_ ," Safay qualified. "It's such a pain in the ass. But, it's been worth it ...to be with you."

Despite the acquisition of profoundly intimate knowledge of one another's bodies over the past week, a deep pink quickly spread beneath Ravus' freckles.

"You _like_ me?"

Safay's chest steadily heaved with a sigh that Ravus had assumed existed only in romance novels. "A lot," Safay almost groaned. He sounded equally on the verge of being betrayed by his stomach. "I've never really known anyone else my own age, who wasn't..." He pulled a slight face and left the thought to dangle, with an unconscious rub over his tattoo.

"I like seeing your face around," Safay continued, on a different track. "Your dots, and your ears, and your eyes. They're really easy to spot from far away, to know it's you. I think I'd even know the color of your hair from anyone else's, by now. I want to just... follow you. Even if you didn't talk to me. Just to be where you are, Ravus. And stay there. Then, when you do finally look at me, you like to touch me? You enjoy it?"

"Very, very much," Ravus breathed out.

"But you're so careful about it," Safay continued. "You could do anything you wanted to me, all week. You had to know; had to have realized at some point that no one else was around. No one at the hotel was going to hear anything. Say anything. I'm a soldier, for the Astrals' sake; I've walked into infirmaries with worse than bites or bruises. You've just wanted in me, wanted to kiss me. And you ask. Even when you know the whole reason I'm here, is for you."

"No one's careful with me, Ravus," Safay said. "Nobody but a prince."

Ravus quickly blinked through his enthrallment with Safay's words, and lowered his gaze.

"Only, I'm no longer any prince," he said, with a small shake of his head. "I haven't been for a long time."

"Bullshit," Safay scoffed. It returned Ravus' gaze to him rather quickly. "I've been around the imperial court for years now, as Iedolas' little "pet assassin". You are so much more of a prince than anyone else I've ever met, Ravus."

"So sure, are you?" Ravus asked, through a soft, sad smile.

"Yes," Safay nodded. He crawled the short distance of floor between them, to seat himself in the void of Ravus' folded legs. Safay's hands held lightly to the sides of Ravus' neck. His loose silver hair jostled lightly in the air stirred by the cottage's ceiling fans. The feline pupils of his eyes were wide and almost normal, in the dim light of the half-shaded windows. Those same eyes cast soft glow on his lashes and the tops of his cheeks, in a green like sunlight through an ocean wave. Ravus regarded him as one might a unicorn, that's come close enough to be touched. Doubting the sincerity of Safay's answer was unthinkable. Ravus' hands slid over his naked skin of their own accord, to hold his courtesan's ass. "I was bred, was raised to serve an emperor with my life, Ravus. When I say it's _you_ I want to follow..."

The word's weight finally clicked for the eldest heir of Tenebrae. The young man who, at that very moment, should have been its king. A king who held in his hands his first and most loyal subject. If it was, in fact, loyalty.

"You're a soldier?" Ravus asked.

Safay offered a hesitant salute. "Captain Safay Roth, Special Forces of the Niflheim Empire, Your Highness."

"This whole week," Ravus began. "Izunia brought me here, talking about me joining the imperial army. He left you here to do the recruiting, didn't he?"

"That's possible, I suppose," Safay granted. Ravus at least took heart in that Safay's response wasn't to lie. "He only told me that I was going to get a chance to get your attention. That whatever else happened, I was to protect you here, do whatever you asked of me. He said I should be open to oral sex, as the very least, but left it up to me where to draw the line, beyond that. I've never had a line for you to cross, Ravus. I came into this, wanting to offer you everything I have, and hoping you'd want to take it."

Safay's face fell into an blend of disappointment and embarrassment. "I-I thought he set up this whole thing, just to help me. He _said_ he wanted to help me, as a friend."

"He could help you, and still help himself," Ravus offered gently. "I don't pretend to understand why he'd want me in the imperial army so badly. Some political symbolism of Tenebrae accepting Niflheim's rule, if I had to wager a guess. The very thought makes me want to be ill. And yet, he was right insofar as it's doing Tenebrae no good for me to be doing nothing in Gralea. They won't allow me to see Luna, most days, so it's not as though she'd lose my comfort or protection by my absence. Lucis has abandoned us. Tenebrae's royal guard, whatever's left of it, would be no match against scores of MTs, and I'm no strategist, no soldier to lead them, if they were."

"But... I could be," Ravus sighed. "If I could earn the appointment to be the governor of my own throne, would that not be better for Tenebrae than sitting back as some iron-fisted tyrant who care not a whit about her does it for me?"

Ravus paused to sigh, and to look up at the soldier in his lap.

"If a soldier bred for the empire would renounce his emperor to call me his prince, should I not at least attempt to prove myself worthy of that show of faith?"

Safay leaned down to rest their foreheads together. Ravus looked into his eyes, with both resignation and resolve.

"If Izunia's intent was to use you to bait me into this choice, his pick couldn't have been finer."

"He told me that you were debating whether to join, and that if you did, I could be one of your trainers. We could be together more."

"Which explains you keeping to your morning regimen," Ravus smiled, "and luring me into it, as well."

"I'd have done my workouts, regardless," Safay grinned back, "but I was happy to have you join in. And I'd be just as happy to help train you, whenever I can, if you said no to the army. You wouldn't be alone, either way. You _won't_ be alone. Not if you'll keep me, Highness."

"I've no want nor need of a servant or pet, Safay," Ravus said, "but I've a dire want and need of an ally, and a friend. Perhaps, even a partner."

The skin beneath Ravus' fingertips succumbed to a wave of goosebumps. He supposed that that was not the reaction of cold-blooded agent whose only goal was to secure their mark.

"The gods help me, my gem, I think I love you."

Safay breathed warmly against his lips. "Yours, always, my prince."

\---------------

[Source Comic](http://landofdoom.tumblr.com/post/162582857737/ffxv-rare-pair-weekravusxsafayday-1-song-based)


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